"Let all the people," announced the speaker, "join in singing that old hymn which some of us have not heard in years, 'The Home of the Soul.'"
The great organ filled the vast auditorium with the strains of the melody, followed by a volume of sweetest song. Many were carried back to the scenes of their childhood, where, gathered around the family altar, were the dear ones long since singing in paradise.
The strangers across the aisle again attracted Dr. Dale's attention. The old man was leaning forward with both hands resting upon his cane, his eyes were closed, and the tears were slowly trickling down the wrinkled face, while with a plaintive, quavery voice he was joining in the singing of his well-beloved song.
At last it was time for the sermon, but the preacher, who by his eloquence and magnetic personality could sway thousands, felt as helpless as a little child to perform the duty before him.
He announced his text: "Jesus saith unto him, I am the way" (John 14:6).
The audience wondered why at that particular point he stopped apparently to offer a word of silent prayer. But then they could not see the expression of hope flash across the face of the child, nor the old man lean still a little farther forward that he might catch every word.
"Rosa," whispered grandpa, "didn't I tell you if we'd go to a meetin' house with the steeple a-p'intin' straight up, we'd find the way? Yes, yes, that's it, it surely is, Rosa, and it's all a-beginnin' to come back. Jesus is the way, Jesus is the way! I wonder I ain't thought of it before."
The sermon which followed, simple in every detail, began by calling attention to the marvelously beautiful description of the heavenly land as contained in the Scripture previously read.
"There are representatives here today of many classes and conditions of society," said the speaker, "the high and the low, the rich and the poor, the learned and the ignorant; but there is no eye that has not shed bitter tears, no life unacquainted with death, sorrow, crying, or pain. Thank God for that glad coming day when He will wipe away all tears, when there shall be no more death, neither sorrow, nor crying, nor pain; for these things shall have passed away!"
He spoke of the glimpse the Scripture gives of the city itself, the New Jerusalem, with its walls and gates. "There is no language of earth by which its glories can be fully described," he continued; "where our idea of beauty leaves off, there heaven begins! Even its foundations are made of the rarest jewels we know.